I like to think my family has quite a few notable members. I have a great-aunt who was a long-time college history professor. My dad's aunts and uncle wrote a Louisiana history text which we used in 7th grade. Some distant cousin somewhere was head basketball coach at Southeastern Louisiana, while I've got some other relative who teaches mathematics at the University of Kentucky.
My mom's dad was a surveyor and engineer, and designed a pretty sizeable bridge in central Louisiana. His son (my uncle) later worked on the design of the replacement bridge, which means my family OWNS that freaking river!! My great-grandparents had 9 children in poor, post-Depression Louisiana, and yet they managed to make sure every one of their kids attended college. I've got one sister who's a nurse, the other's in school right now, and my brother has played music for the Pope. That's right ... the Pope! The freaking Pope!!So, all that to say that we've managed to carve out a couple of minor accomplishments here and there. Nothing, however, compares to Billy!
Both of my mom's grandmothers lived well into their 80's (actually, I think one made it to her 90's). Well, when my mom's maternal grandmother, Big Mama, eventually passed away, I went back down south for the funeral.
(That's right ... we called her Big Mama! We called my other great-grandmother Murtool (instead of Myrtle), and I've got an uncle EVERYONE calls Nootsie (instead of Ralph, Jr.)! Cajuns are weird - what's new there?)
During the visitation, distant family and friends poured in from all over. Of particular interest to me, however, was an affable gentleman appearing to be in his 70's or so. He had white hair but certainly appeared to be in pretty good shape. I saw him talk to everyone, including my mother, pay his respects, and so on. I had never met this guy before, so I eventually asked my mom about him. It turns out that his name was Billy, and he was my great-grandmother's younger brother. He still lived in Marksville, had a slew of kids, etc., etc. Apparently in his younger days, though, Billy had been a professional wrestler, touring around the South during that great period when crappy, regional wrestling events were still shown on regular TV.Oh, did I mention Billy is a MIDGET!
That's right, boys and girls, I'm related to Billy the Kid, and not the cheesy gun-toting punk. No, this Billy the Kid tore it up during the '70s, as he appeared at the same events as Ric Flair and Jimmy Hart. Just check out this awesome picture from back in the day. Cajun Power, indeed! Now, unless your father invented Bat Shark Repellant or something, you're going to be hard-pressed to convince me you've got something better than that in the family tree!
Apparently, there's also a couple of DVD's out there featuring Billy. This first one looks like it's a pretty homemade operation, but it's got a clip of a tag team match of Billy with some guy named Little Jamaica as they battled Sky Low Low & Little Brutus. According to the seller, "Billy finally pinned Sky after whipping him into Brutus. The offbeat shenanigans continued after the bell." So not only did Billy get the pin, but there were freaking SHENANIGANS going on!The second video is even more off the chain, as Billy was in a tag-team match with a regular size dude. Not only that, his partner was freakin' Jimmy Hart! Jimmy Hart used to wrestle with Andy Kaufman, for goodness sake! One of these days, I need to splurge and get one of these for my own viewing pleasure.
Check out this roster for Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling. Not only is Ric Flair on that roster, but they had guys named Mighty Igor, "Professor" Boris Malenko, and even the infamous Masked Superstar. I won't lie and say I'm a huge wrestling fan or anything, but that just seems SO COOL!!
Well, that's it ... there's my tie to greatness. Not only did I rub elbows with a wrestling bad-ass, but I actually have some kick-ass in my bloodline. Really, I don't know why I didn't come out of the womb doing a reverse pile-driver on the doctor ... maybe it's a recessive gene or something.Until next time,
The Jim
The first part of my tale takes us to a simpler time – an age of reason, class, and distinction. Of course, I speak of the late 1970’s, when Wink Martindale unveiled 
Our first house there was a relatively new abode on a single street on the outskirts of town. I believe it was supposed to be the start of a new neighborhood, but I never saw any additional development going on during our stay there. Our backyard abutted an expansive pasture, which was a fantastic place for flying kites. I distinctly remember the day we bought a 4-foot deep above-ground pool, and I stayed outside in it for approximately 12 hours straight. My sunburn from that day resulted in every inch of my skin peeling off ... I essentially molted that summer!
That’s right, True Believers ... we lived next to the freaking 
I never met the Dog, and 8 to 12 months later, his house burned down. (I have no idea why, but I like to think it spontaneously combusted from sheer bad-assitude!) We moved away, and that was that ... but for that brief time, I was living next to a true American Treasure. How many of you punks can say as much?
Sounds like a heaping pile of crap, right? Upon further contemplation, here are some of the phrases I should have included, but didn't:
I have not been in the mood to write lately, as I’m having a terrible week. First of all, last week I was unloading some stuff from my car, so I had the doors unlocked in my driveway. I was making a couple of trips, so it was probably unlocked and open for 8 minutes tops. Within that period, some punk ran off with $500 worth of electronics. The two biggest items were my GPS unit (which my company owns) and my video iPod (which is all me). I put the car in the garage, locked it up, and didn’t discover the theft until the next morning.
Now, I don’t mind living in a rental neighborhood. That’s where I lived back in Louisiana, and I had zero problems with it. I shouldn’t, however, be paying an exorbitant amount for the honor of living in that rental neighborhood. Cap that off with the fact that even though the homeowner’s association has TWO MILLION DOLLARS in the bank (above and beyond their capital and operating expenses, which is another $5 million), and it’s a bit much. It gets even better, though … last week, I also got a bill for another $120 homeowner’s fee, which is apparently a one-time fee for all new home purchasers.
The people with the car insurance won’t cover anything, but they did suggest I file a police report. I didn’t bother originally, because they’ll never track that stuff down - we all know that. Anyway, I call the police this morning, and they send a pair of cops over. One of them was pretty much a prick to me the whole time. He asked me to repeat the story multiple times just to look for inconsistencies. He quite gruffly instructed me to take my hands out of my pockets while talking to him. He pretty much ragged on me for not reporting it sooner, and then after we’re done, he tells me I should report something like that immediately after it happens next time. Of course! Why wouldn’t I want to deal with a condescending, unpleasant SOB again and again?
My wife’s stressed out about school. I’m stressed out because we’re lucky to break even financially each month, but that’s only because we’re borrowing a ton of money for her student loans. And neither one of us handles stress well.
I’m fully aware there are about 4 billion people who have things far worse than me. In the final analysis, I’m complaining about the minor details of my relatively cushy life. Regardless of that reality, though, there’s only so much discussion about TV shows and comic books one wants to have during a week like that. And since I could total up all my readers on 1 hand (even if I was missing a thumb), there wasn’t a whole lot of motivation to put out a post.
As the show opens, we’re on a German airliner as it’s going through a massive thunderstorm. Everything’s all tense, and then everyone on board has their face melt off. (Yeah, I know – pleasant way to start up a series). So the plane lands on autopilot in Boston, and in comes our intrepid hero, Olivia Dunham. She’s an FBI agent on some unnamed special task force, and she also serves as a liaison with Homeland Security, or some such babble. True, it’s not as exciting a job as working at Credit Dauphine, but what are you gonna do?
Not to go off on too much of a tangent, but it came to my attention that of the 4 really successful shows Abrams has developed, 3 of them (including Felicity) have central female characters. And given how much Jack whines on Lost, he’s pretty much a woman too! Ha Ha! Am I right, fellas? (Ah - nothing's more fun than 1950's humor!)
After our plucky Agent Cutie gets back to the office, she uses the FBI’s version of Google (Foogle? Fed-gle?) and after struggling through approximately 2 minutes of research, she manages to identify a scientist who may be able to help. He used to perform research on “
What did I think? Well, after watching it, I went ahead and set the DVR to record the show – so I obviously enjoyed it. It wasn’t the greatest show ever, and as it stands, it certainly hasn’t moved ahead of Heroes, Lost, or 24 in my viewing rotation. It’s not even all that original, as it’s really a mash-up of X-Files (FBI team, which includes female hottie, investigates paranormal), Alias (female agent involved in conspiracies and paranormal badness), and even some Lost (weirdness and potentially evil corporation). Unlike most of Abrams’s series, I don’t think you’ll have to watch every single one to catch it all; rather, it feels like the episodes will be pretty much stand-alone (at least for a while). I have to admit, though, it shows promise, and I think I would be stupid not to at least stick with it for the first few episodes at least. I mean, the guy gave me Milo Rambaldi and The Smoke Monster - he's going to have something interesting up his sleeve.
